Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Coffy (1973)

Coffy: You want to spit on me and make me crawl? 

I'm gonna piss on your grave tomorrow.

It's really the "tomorrow" that makes that line.

A very happy 77 to the legend the icon Pam Grier.

Rage on, perfect queen. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Body Heat (1981)

Ned: Maybe you shouldn't dress like that.

Matty: This is a blouse and a skirt. 

I don't know what you're talking about.

Ned: You shouldn't wear that body.

God there is so much snappy dialogue in Body Heat, I love it so much -- I could've chosen a dozen other lines to highlight (see also here); it's why I think it's one of the most successful of the neo-noirs that popped up in the 70s and 80s (alongside Chinatown of course). The dialogue harkens beautifully back to the genre's heyday where the verbal playfulness between the lovers-to-be reveals not just their desire but their danger -- anybody who can whip out a double entendre this fast isn't to be trusted. And it also helps when the people are as sexy as William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are in this scorcher. Anyway we're here of course because Lawrence Kasdan's sweaty masterpiece is hitting 4K thanks to the Criterion Collection today -- go snatch up a copy stat! How hot is that cover art too? Humina humina!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

North By Northwest (1959)

Phillip Vandamm: Seems to me you fellows 

could stand  a little less training from the F.B.I. 

and a little more from the Actor's Studio.

Granted I've seen this movie approximately one thousand times but can't you just hear James Mason purring out that rejoinder? God what a voice that man had. I've already used one of these posts a few years back to expound upon the implied homosexual connection between Mason's character and his favorite side-piece henchman played by Martin Landau, but I could go on about how James Mason is like the paltonic ideal of a Hitchcock Baddie for days. Smooth as hell, a gentleman to the end, unspooling a truly ridiculous plot via ludicrous means -- sure why not send Cary Grant to the middle of nowhere to be shot at by a crop duster? Why not, I say! Anyway Mason was born 117 years ago today -- go watch one of his movies! You will not be disappointed. He was always the man.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Close (2022)

Léo: Imagine that you are a very small chicken. You just hatched. You just opened your eyes for the first time. All ducks are yellow. And you too... But you are much more beautiful than the rest. You are special.

A happy 35 to beautiful gay Belgian director Lukas Dhont today! I never saw his controversial first film Girl (which has a cisgender actor playing a trans girl) but I loved his follow-up Close very very very much -- here is my review. If you still haven't seen it fix that! It's a stunning rumination on the fraught bonds between confused young boys that took me right back to the extraordinary pain and beauty of those years and those relationships of my own. Anyway checking to see what Dhont's got cooking...

... since it's been four years, my man, and I see that he has already finished his follow-up ! Indeed because I ignore Cannes stuff as much as possible I am just realizing it's screening at Cannes this very week! Never come to me for Cannes stuff y'all. I purposefully drag my feet. Anyway it's called Coward and it's about two Belgian soldiers who, during World War I find romance (I'm assuming) while staging cross-dressing theatrical performances in the field. There is a great chat with Dhont over at THR from just two days ago -- read it here. Can't wait to see this! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Charade (1963)

Peter: Do we know each other?

Reggie: Why, do you think we're going to?

Peter: I don't know. How would I know?

Reggie: Because I already know an awful lot of people, and 

until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else.

I can't tell you how often this bit of dialogue from Charade pops up inside my head -- as an avowed hermit I doubt that surprises anyone. But really I promise you that in my head the intention is closer to the line from Dawn of the Dead -- "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." Being in my life is hell! I am saving people from knowing me -- it's fucking exhausting knowing me. Anyway (speaking of?) today would have been Audrey Hepburn's 97th birthday. You only have three short years to make your "Centennial of Audrey" little black dress that you'll wear to join us all when we go  riot and loot Tiffany's -- better get on it!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Poetic Justice (1993)

Iesha: Why you don't ever wanna have no fun no more?

Justice: Please.

Iesha: Girl, don't you know the world is just 

a big place for us to go out and fuck up in it.

I'm not posting a quote from this movie starring Janet Jackson right now because Janet had the common sense and decency to say "fuck no" about being in that gross bio-pic of her brother that just made a shit-ton of money this past weekend -- it's just good timing like that. I am posting this quote because Criterion just dropped their box-set of John Singleton's "Hood Trilogy" today -- besides Poetic Justice it includes 1991's Boyz n the Hood and 2001's Baby Boy, the latter which I've still somehow never seen! But speaking for the other two this set is long-awaited and a very welcome addition to my collection. All that said -- there are so many great little Regina King performances out there waiting to be re-appreciated! I've loved her since forever -- seeing her win that Oscar for Beale Street was one of those far and few between legit triumphant times where AMPAS did the right thing. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bring Her Back (2025)

Laura: Respect my fucking privacy.

I still kind of can't believe that there was absolutely no awards buzz for Sally Hawkins' work in Bring Her Back last year -- I guess there could have been conufsion on whether her role was Lead or Supporting? I'd personally call it a Lead -- and I'd say she deserved a nomination more than half the people who did get nominated for that statue, too. Hell I liked Hawkins' work more than I liked Buckley's steamrolling performance in Hamnet, even -- as a person who generally loves Buckley I found her work in that movie overwrought; I found Mescal more moving. But I guess there are similarities between Hawkins and Buckley's characters that I hadn't even considered until now, and perhaps they're the reason Hawkins gained no footing with precursors -- both characters are after all women lashing out in grief after the death of a child. Hawkins' work is the only one that, to me, felt truly surprising though. Not to get lost in old Oscar talk! JFC who cares! So anyway! Sally Hawkins is 50 today! She's a gem and I'm so happy we have her. The movies are 75% more interesting with her running around. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Special Effects (1984)

Neville: Like I always say, I don't know what I like 

until I see it. And then I know I don't like it.

Have any of you seen this sleazy 1984 Larry Cohen film? (Redundancy after redundancy there.) I only saw it a few weeks ago because the fine folks at Radiance Films put out a gorgeous new restoration of it on blu-ray and it was exactly what I wanted from a sleazy 1984 Larry Cohen film that stars Eric Bogosian as a movie director who decides to use a real life murder he commits as inspiration for his next movie. It's kind of Larry Cohen's spin on Vertigo and it's terrific. I totally felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards. Anyway speaking of Eric Bogosian, a happy 73rd birthday to the character actor whose career has as of late gotten a bump thanks to the double-punch of Uncut Gems and the Interview With the Vampire series. And speaking of the latter -- we have a trailer for the new season, baby! Sweet Rockin' Lestat gimme! I'm surprised they officially changed the name of the show to go with the book though.

Interview With the Vampire... excuse me, 

The Vampire Lestat returns on June 7th.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Road House (2024)

Ben Brandt: You, tell me about this bouncer.

Moe: Oh, uh, yeah I dunno, man. 

He's kinda strange, you know?

Ben Brandt: What do you mean, strange?

Moe: Yeah.. You know, he acts all nice and shit 

like he's Mr. Rogers or something. But then, man, 

he hauls off. He hauls off! He beats the living shit 

outta you! So, really interesting guy, overall. 

Ben Brandt: That was a brilliant analysis. 

Sam, throw these dum-dums overboard.

You know I chose this passage of dialogue from the Road House remake just to post these gifs of Billy Magnusson in a speedo -- you know it, I know it, Billy knows it, the aliens a billion light years from Earth know it, so let's just move on. Because it's Billy's birthday! Our beautiful blond Billy boy is turning 41 today and we wish him a great one. I imagine he is having one of those anyway since well he's Billy Magnussen, look at him. But also his new series The Audacity has, from what I can tell, gotten very good notices -- I haven't started it yet but it's very much on the list. Any of you watch it yet? 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Scream 2 (1997)

Cici: Drink with your brains, 

that's our motto.

A happy 49th birthday to the legend Sarah Michelle Gellar today! Yes it's true our beloved Buffy will be turning 50 next year -- I would say don't that make ya feel old but SMG is only a couple of months older than I am so let's just shut up and not think about any of that right now. Jinkies. Let's just celebrate this lady we love so very. Picking her role in the second Scream movie might feel a little random for this post but I maintain that her stellar work at humanizing the character of Cici in such a short window of time is part of why I actually (controversially?) prefer Scream 2 to the first movie. A recent re-watch of the original I Know What You Did Last Summer gave me the same impression -- SMG does Herculean emotional lifting with her screentime in these two 1997 slashers. She's so good! And yeah it blows that the Buffy reboot fell apart but let's hope that now that her kids are raised and she's ready to work again we'll be seeing lots of her shortly. The people demand their Smidge fix!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

The Captain: My government murdered Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy.. My government overthrew good, honest, democratic leaders of the people in Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Bolivia. Along with Britain, we carved up the Middle East, creating artificial geographical boundaries and installing puppet dictators. War itself became our most lucrative industry. Every bomb that's dropped, somebody makes a million dollars. You don't have to know where those bombs are exploding. You don't have to see the grieving mothers and the mangled bodies of their children. Eugene Debs gave this speech in Canton, Ohio, in 1918: 'Throughout history wars have been waged for conquest and plunder... The master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought... They've taught you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command... When Wall Street says war, the press says war.'"

Well that speech hits home in 2026, huh? Anyway a happy birthday to the great Swedish director Ruben Östlund today! I was super sad when I read that his next movie The Entertainment System Is Down wasn't ready for Cannes this year so he's holding it off for an entire year for Cannes 2027 -- what, you're too good for another festival, Ruben?? The supposed reason is he's gunning for a third Palme d'Or -- which would break the record -- but, and I say this as a big fan, this feels terribly presumptious, Ruben. I mean you can think this sort of thing inside of your head but maybe don't let that narrative out into the world -- that shit draws the knives all on its own, my man. That said with a fantastic-seeming cast including Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Julie Delpy, Tobias Menzies, Daniel Brühl, Lindsay Duncan, Nicholas Braun and Connor Swindells, and a right-up-his-alley micro/macrocosm class-warfare story about a bunch of people trapped on a long flight where the entertainment system goes down and they all presumably lose their minds, I'm expecting good things. Which is why making us wait an extra year is deviant behavior!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019)

Sgt O'Neil: Reminds me of a dog that I once had. It was a mangy old thing. And I am a cruel bastard, so I would whip it every which way. I'd beat on him just for looking at me. So, I figure if you hate on something for long enough, well, he just comes to love you anyway, just for those few moments when you don't.

You might think that quote is a weird one for me to choose as a "life lesson" to celebrate Charlie Hunnam's 46th birthday today with, to which I tell you -- we're talking about Charlie Hunnam. And Charlie could treat mt like a dog and whip me every day and I would love him anyway. I watched his King Arthur movie ffs. This stopped being a hypothetical long ago. Happy birthday, Charlie!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Synonyms (2019)

Yoav: I moved to France to flee Israel. Flee a state that is nasty, obscene, ignorant, idiotic, sordid, fetid, crude, abominable, odious, lamentable, repugnant,
detestable, mean-spirited, mean-hearted... 

Emile: No country is all that at once.

Today is the 51st birthday of the rightfully outraged Israeli ex-pat filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who's weaponized his filmmaking to dissect the horrors of his homeland making one furious masterpiece after another. This includes the brilliant film above as well as 2014's The Kindergarten Teacher, 2021's Ahed's Knee, and the just-recently-released here in the U.S. film Yes. And speaking of Yes I am rather furious at myself for not reviewing that movie because I found it a total stunner, so let's throw down some words about it since the ocassion's presented itself. (I already shared the trailer right here.)

Yes tells the story of Y (Ariel Bronz) and his wife Yasmin (Efrat Dor) as they party the pain away in Tel Aviv, turning their radios up so they can drown out the sounds of the bombs dropping onto Gaza. He's a musician, she's a dance-instructor, and the two of them routinely hand off their baby son (pointedly named Noah) so they can humiliate themselves every night for the grotesque powers-that-be in order to sustain a living. Lapid gives the Israeli elite the full Beckmann & Dix treament, rendering them hideous to the point where they're literally bending over and waving their assholes in our face. It ain't sublte, nor should it be. 

Since the pair are gorgeous and entertaining and simply good at what they do (i.e. debasing themselves with extreme vigor) Y & Yasmin move pretty easily up the social ladder, until Y finds himself charged with writing a new national anthem for Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks. For there he's shot through the cannon of a dark night of the soul as he tries to come to terms with his role as propogandist for genocide, but Lapid spares no one his visciousness; everyone is to blame for keeping the broken system afloat. Yes is brutal, brilliant, a ballistic missle shot straight at our insidious self-preservation in the face of so much unspeakable. Its farce is tragedy, all too familiar. All the punchlines are a horror; our laughter curdled, indistinguishable from screams. How au current, if you will. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Boxing Helena (1993)

Dr. Nick Cavanaugh: If you were a 

real woman,  you'd lie to me about our sex.

A very happy birthday to director Jennifer Lynch today -- I have recently been in mourning for the many many years that I went without this perfectly accursed (complimentary) movie in my life, having only seen it for the first time in 2022. I did get to see it on the big screen in 2024 though (I love living in this city!) and it fully cemented itself as one of my favorite pieces of deranged cinema. I can't even pretend it's just for reasons of camp that I love this movie anymore -- I just love it with my full body and soul. And that's me talking with all of my limbs still attached! But seriously -- if you've never seen Bill Paxton's performance in this movie, you have not lived. Same goes for Julian Sands in the tiniest running shorts ever put on-screen. Same goes for limbless Sherilyn Fenn sipping sweet tea through a straw. Oh my god I have to watch it again right now. Thank you, Jennifer Lynch! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bugonia (2025)

Teddy: We're just leveling the playing field.

It's not torture. Torture is what it's done to us.

I know that Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia got four Oscar nominations -- including one for Best Picture -- but I still feel as if this movie walked out of 2025 somewhat underappreciated. Nobody really thought it was actually going to win any of those awards, after all. I think it's just that Yorgos has proven so consistently excellent and interesting and provocative that he's become a victim of his own awesomeness. Even if I, a person who put Bugonia at #8 on my favorite films of last year, were to rank his films, Bugonia would end up somewhere mid-tier. But that's all just a matter of infintesimal degrees because I am a hossana-singer for every damn one of them. And Bugonia's goddamned great. In fact, you know what, I might re-watch Bugonia this very evening in order to celebrate the birth of the great Jesse Plemons, which coincidentally is also the reason for this post. See -- I told you Bugonia was under-appreciated, because the great Jesse Plemons didn't deservedly get nominated for Best Actor for it. Four noms shoulda been five dammit! In summation go watch Bugonia yourselves and try to tell me I'm not correct on all of this. And then go buy the vinyl of Jerskin Fendrix's score too. That banger was second only to Jonny Greenwood's One Battle After Another music, if you ask me! We might not be lucky in much these days but we're lucky to have Yorgos making movies!   

And the BUGONIA vinyl from @waxworkrecords.bsky.social too! I say “Jerskin” you say “Fendrix” - JERSKIN!

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 9:03 PM

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bulworth (1998)

Bulworth: Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain't gonna work, no sir, not those / 'Cause the thing that's the same in every one of these / Is these motherfuckers there, the insurance companies!

Tanya: Insurance! Insurance!

Bulworth: Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word - SOCIALISM!

Up front I have to admit that I have never seen Bulworth -- I guess I was into what the kids call "cringe" before the kids were calling it "cringe" because the sight of Warren Beatty rapping in the trailers for this movie in 1998 made all of my insides recoil right up into my insides and I never got over it. But I have heard good things about Bulworth -- any fans of it out there? I was going to say that it's a shame it was the last movie Warren Beatty ever directed, but it's not actually that at all -- I think I can be forgiven for forgetting 2016's Rules Don't Apply exists though. (Sorry Alden Ehrenreich.) Anyway it's Warren's birthday today and we wish him a good one, where ever it is that he's been squirreled away by Annette Bening -- there's a really ridiculously long rap quoted on this movie's IMDb page that I came really close to using as our quote in this post but chickened out; it's kind of terrifying how much of what he was saying in 1998 remains true / has only worsened with time, though. We're falling apart. Happy Monday!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Matrix Ressurections (2021)

Smith: What has the world come to 

when you can't even trust a program?

I feel like one day the world will get The Matrix Ressurections for the deconstructionist masterpiece that it is, but that day doesn't seem to be today (although I know I'm not alone on this island, so cheers to those of you who agree) -- anyway a happy 41st birthday to our boy Jonny Groff today! This is kind of a weird choice of a quote to celebrate him with -- something from Looking or Mindhunter probably would've made more sense, but I actually love watching our sweet boy get to play villainous in this flick. Great fun was had! But speaking of Looking -- anybody done a re-watch lately? I have very much been feeling a re-watch coming on. In summation, this photo of a Baby Groff that I have never seen before:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from: 

Amour (2012)

Georges: In the courtyard of the house where grandma lived, there was a young guy at the window who asked me where I'd been. He was a couple of years older than me, a braggart who really impressed me. "To the movies," I said, because I was proud that my grandma had given me the money to go all alone to the cinema. "What did you see?" I started to tell him the story of the movie, and as I did, all the emotion came back. I didn't want to cry in front of the boy, but it was impossible; there I was, crying out loud in the courtyard, and I told him the whole drama to the bitter end. 

Anne: So? How did he react? 

Georges: No idea. He probably found it amusing. I don't remember. I don't remember the film either. But I remember the feeling. That I was ashamed of crying, but that telling him the story made all my feelings and tears come back, almost more powerfully than when I was actually watching the film, and that I just couldn't stop.

A happy 84th birthday to the legendary director Michael Haneke today. In the spirit of Amour, a film about death, I'll admit here (and hopfully writing this out won't be some sort of horrible jinx) that I've come to terms with the assumption, over the course of the nine years since Haneke's previous film Happy End was released, that Michael Haneke probably isn't making any more movies. I might have kept holding out hope but then that great big boxed-set of his movies got released last year -- I pre-ordered the minute it was announced, only to get an email a few months later that the set was being delayed because Haneke, who was being very hands on with it, was insisting that the previously-missing Happy End make it onto the set.  That immediately read to me that he was seeing the set as a culmination -- a finality. I'd love to be proven wrong but it's been nine years and the man is 84. And also Isabelle Huppert said as much a couple of years ago. Truth be told the one-two punch of Amour and Happy End is a killer way to cap off his career. But if he wants to come back swinging, we're ready and we'll shoot through the moon with enthusiasm about it. For now I just hope he's enjoying life. Thanks for the movies, good sir. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Living Out Loud (1998)

Judith: It's amazing, isn't it? 

The things you find yourself agreeing to?

I will always grab onto it being Holly Hunter's birthday to give a little love to not just her, one of the greats, but this apocalyptically underappreciated movie. It makes me so mad that nobody has given this movie a proper fancy release since the ancient DVD came out! It's a perfect movie, perfect. And now I'm probably gonna have to haul out my copy of the aforementioned ancient DVD and watch it for the 10,000th time tonight. Perfect. All that and Eddie Cibrian in tighty-whities -- what else do you need??? Perfect.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Holiday (1938)

Nick Potter: You know, this reminds me a little of the 

palace of Caligula. You remember Caligula, don't you, dear? 

Susan Potter: Oh, very well indeed. Whatever became of him?

I usually only post about my beloved Holiday around the, you guessed it, holidays. But what is the 140th anniversary of the comic legend and "lifelong committed bachelor" Edward Everett Horton if not a holiday? One of the great scene stealers there ever was or ever will be, Horton wandered through classics like Arsenic and Old Lace, Top Hat, Trouble in Paradise, The Gay Divorcee, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Design For Living, and on and on and on, stealing scenes left right and right off Cary Grant's bumbling lips and bumblingest hips, among many. We love him! That said Holiday is very much my go-to-fave (as it is for every single actor in it) -- but what's yours?